


40 Hugger/Get Fucked

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [117]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Other, The elephant in the room, cuddlecore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 13:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: awkward dweebs snuggling about their feelings. no plot just janky h/c fluff, does what it says on the tin. everything implied but additionally implied 12/Missy





	40 Hugger/Get Fucked

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who prompted: please, do you have any comfort dw fic in you to give? or suggest? any pairing? (twelvedole's nice but niche so i don't expect there to be too much)

Nardole was on his fourth cup of tea, second sleeve of biscuits, and fifth rewatched episode of Bake-Off when the Doctor stumbled out of their office and into the study. Wearing a different outfit from before, carrying that telltale exhaustion and defiance.

“Up late again, I see.” Nardole did his best to not sound prissy. _Up Late,_ that was code for _I know where you’ve been and who you were there with but I am too tired, frankly, to force the issue._

The Doctor sighed, rolled their shoulders, and opened their mouth to unfurl a sentence. It took a few syllables for Nardole to realize that he was in fact paying the correct level of attention, and they were speaking gibberish.

“Oh,” the Doctor said. Well, not ‘oh’ precisely, but in a tone of voice that indicated an ‘oh’. They smiled tightly, and dug deep into their coat pocket for the sonic screwdriver. They waved vaguely at the TARDIS, then let the screwdriver lay in their upturned hand, fingers curled loosely around the shaft, and stared at it as if it might have something to say about this situation.

“Ah. Yes, of course,” Nardole guessed.

“Turned the translation matrix off for a bit. You were taking a nap, I figured you wouldn’t notice.” They clenched their hand around the screwdriver, palming it back into their coat pocket with the sleight-of-hand flair of a mediocre street magician.

That hadn’t been Nardole’s guess. “I didn’t, not til just now. Why?”

“What?” The Doctor swiped the last of Nardole’s biscuits, shoving a handful into their mouth.

“Why’d you turn it off?”

The Doctor stared him down, the fire-and-brimstone effect somewhat muted by the spray of crumbs and chipmunk cheeks. They swallowed, and said: “You know why.”

Fair enough. Nardole just liked to hear the Doctor say it, for whatever reason. But - wait. “You speak the same language, though,” he said, mentally crossing his fingers that Guess #2 was more accurate than the first.

“Used to. Now…” They sighed, and deflated slightly.

Here was where Nardole noticed the Doctor was swaying, unsteady. A bad sign; the ‘things are somewhat worse than previously estimated’ alarm sounded in his head. And then he flinched: at the clumsy, glancing, maybe-accidental blow of the Doctor’s psychic sprawl.

(He’d had a telepathic spleen installed a while back. Neither of them had ever said anything about it, so he wasn’t sure if the Doctor knew, or if they did know, whether they knew that he knew. This was either a rare gesture of intimacy and trust or a serious breach of privacy.)

(Wordless and unfathomable and as skittish as a feral cat, and it snapped back as quick as it came)

“I have a psychic spleen,” Nardole said.

The Doctor just glared at him, before dropping their gaze. Dropping in general, or drooping.

_Sit down,_ Nardole thought, very hard, trying to focus his mental energies toward where his spleen might be located. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” _Please sit down before you fall down, please._

“Why’d you bother asking if you’ve already made up your mind?” the Doctor spat out. Oh, anger, what a surprise.

Nardole revved up his motor and, utilizing the power of surprise, gently but firmly toppled the Doctor onto the nearby sofa. “I wanted to hear you say it. Did she hurt you?”

“No. Not since - not ever. She’s not like that.” The Doctor closed their eyes, sinking down into the slightly lumpy cushions.

“You know I want to check.” _You know I think you’re lying._

“With your special eyes.”

“Yes,” Nardole affirmed. “With my special eyes.”

Something sort of broke in the Doctor, there, and they loosened up just enough to go taut again, arms spread wide, eyes open and raised to the heavens. “Go ahead, then.”

Nardole squinted. “You could do with some rest, but that’s nothing new. And more vegetables - leafy greens? Are radishes the things with the…things, that do the thing? But you’re, um.” ‘Fine’ is still the wrong word. “Not physically damaged.”

“Happy?”

“Not particularly, no.” His spleen was itching, so he sat down next to the Doctor, lumpy cushions tilting and pulling the Doctor into his side.

Their breath caught, and then came back haltingly. They didn’t move. Nardole carefully, slowly let his arm slip around their back, curling his hand loosely around their upper arm. They didn’t move. He tugged them closer, and wriggled around until his arm was around their waist, and they didn’t move, although they were breathing more evenly now.

“Just because it’s not physical - ”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“- Doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.” Nardole rubbed his thumb in a circle against the Doctor’s coat, experimentally. Touch sensitive, a wounded cat. They’d done this before (they don’t talk about it).

They tensed, then relaxed, and then sort of melted, and Nardole cautiously took this as approval to continue. Full-on cuddling, though neither of them would ever announce it as such. He let the Doctor rest their head on his chest, kept drawing circles against them. Outer layers only. Maybe his other hand ruffling their hair, just a bit. Pulling slightly at the curls at their neck, in the fashion that neither would ever admit both of them liked for a variety of reasons.

“Turn it off again,” he said. Hands moving steady, as best he could maintain.

“The translation matrix?”

“Yeah. You know English, right? I’m from a human colony, British, I think I remember. Wouldn’t mind learning a few Gallifreyan phrases, on the off-chance I meet another one of your folk.”

The pulse-out, again, that rough incoherent mental burr. And a retreat, and the Doctor’s arm clasped around his middle. “An educational experience,” they said, hesitantly.

“You’re the professor.”

The Doctor fidgeted, squirmed about til they unearthed the sonic screwdriver, and then flicked it at the TARDIS. The ship hummed in response.

“A nice salad, I think. For tea. Or, well, it’s gone on breakfast now, but you know.” His voice felt fuller in his ears, and just slightly off, no longer routed through the ship. A rusty, creaky language.

“Mmm,” the Doctor responded. And then something else, unintelligible, like Welsh almost but obviously not Welsh. Space-Welsh.

“Let me guess.”

“Yeah?”

“'Fuck salads, let’s get kebabs’.”

The Doctor huffed out a laugh, leaning into his embrace. “Something like that, yeah. Sure.”

 

 

(They don’t talk about it, either of them; they never do. There’s something to be said for honest bullshit, though. He hears his old language creak through his lungs and the Doctor’s halting, probably-broken Gallifreyan mumbled into his waistcoat. “Eggs. Sauteed spinach,” he says, squeezing them just a bit tighter. “With garlic. Tomatoes, maybe. We’ve got them in, because I went grocery shopping this time, not you, Mr. Donuts And A Single Bulb Of Fennel. Do you have a word for fennel? Probably not. Just substitute the word for ‘idiot’.”)

(The Doctor hums and pulls closer, reciting something under their breath. Nursery rhyme, or school-yard taunt, or grocery list; one of those.)


End file.
